Voyage Brisé

Broken Journey (1948)

** (out of 4)

Forgettable "disaster" film has a plane crashing in the Alps and the variety of people on board must try to figure out a way to rescue themselves as well as not fight each other. The entire disaster genre has always been popular whether it was in the silent era, those films of the 30s like SAN FRANSISCO or IN OLD CHICAGO and going all the way up to the craze in the 1970s. With that said, most of these films are still well remembered by film buffs but I guess it's easy to see why BROKEN JOURNEY has pretty much been forgotten. This really does seem like a drawn out, boring version of FIVE CAME BACK and this here doesn't feature a single character to care for. I thought the entire group of survivors were either annoying, boring or they just weren't anyone to root or care for. This is certainly a death nail in a disaster picture like this because the fun thing is seeing the wide range of people trying to cope with the situation and each other but there's just no one here to care about. Another problem is that the entire situation is just way too pretty. I mean, just take a look at the crash sequence, which seems like a simple landing on the side of a mountain because of how easy and pretty it all looked. The situation that the people are in is never dramatic because no matter what happens something good will take place so you never once feel as if these people are in danger. The performances range from good to decent and the cinematography is without question the best thing going for the film. The non-stop dialogue has the characters saying one boring thing after another and in the end there's just no reason to watch this.